Disney Plus Censors ‘Splash’s Nudity In the Most Ridiculous Way

According to the Motion Picture Association of America, Splash is rated PG. According to Disney+, Splash is rated PG-13. In almost every case, studios work hard to bring down a movie’s ratings. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a movie studio willfully (and seemingly unilaterally) slap a higher rating on a film that it has been given by the MPAA.

That doesn’t mean that Disney has added more sexuality to Splash, the 1984 romantic comedy about a guy (Tom Hanks) who falls in love with an actual mermaid (Daryl Hannah). Quite the contrary. As observed by Allison Pregler on Twitter — and confirmed by me with my own eyes on my own Disney+ account — Disney has added extra CGI hair to Hannah’s character in a key scene in order to remove any inkling that she might be naked onscreen.

Watch the censored Splash footage right here:

Here’s the original version of the scene, albeit in a low-res version that makes comparing a little tougher than it would be otherwise. You will note that Hannah’s character already has extremely long hair that masks some of her private areas. It’s not like her posterior was just hanging out there for the whole world to see. The Disney+ version just adds more hair until it looks like she’s wearing hair underwear:

Even though it’s only (technically) rated PG, Splash was actually Disney’s first movie ever released through its Touchstone Pictures label, which was explicitly created for films from Disney that were deemed to adult for the traditional, family-friendly Walt Disney Studios banner. Why, then, is it on Disney+, which is specifically intended for that same family audience? Why not put it on Hulu, the Disney-controlled streaming site that has much more adult content? I don’t know. All I know is that censored Splash footage is wild. Really, really wild.